Eddie Monge Jr.

One of the first things that greatly annoyed me when I started using Mac OS X was that I could not tab in a form to a checkbox or radio button. That is a pretty glaring oversight and really kills usability for me. When I am filling out a form I rarely use the mouse to move between fields and just use tab and space to check boxes or select drop down items. Fortunately, the people at Apple realized how stupid they can be sometimes and decided to add an option to allow this. They didn’t make it standard (which would have been the obvious solution to anyone who has filled out a form) but it is easy to change.

These instructions are from MacTips.org:

First go to System Preferences
Choose Keyboard & Mouse
Under Keyboard Shortcuts there is an option to tab through all controls. Select the radio button for All Controls and you are all set.

Another way Apple thinks it knows best when they really don’t; like when they said people don’t need copy and paste on the iPhone since no one does that anyway….

A minor dissertation (yeah yeah, I know its not even close to being one) on my theories about teleportation (hmm that’s not in Firefox’s dictionary), faster-than-light speed and a hint of time travel.

I want to get the notion that if we successfully figure out how to teleport things (I hear we are close or have some very good theories on how to do it), that it will be instantaneous out of people’s heads.  First, the fastest that is currently possible will be light speed, which if just around earth is almost near instant. Second, it wouldn’t even be light speed because it most likely would be traveling over wires or fiber cabling. That means speed is limited to how fast data can travel over the cabling. I imagine that converting an object to binary, or some other form of data that can be transmitted via light or electricity would produce massive amounts of data. Sending that data over some form of medium would take a long time, not just in terms of the signal reaching the end point, but also in terms of sending the entire data stream from one end to the other. There also has to be computers to break down and then compile the data. With today’s technology, it might just be faster to overnight ship the item.

This was a weird post but oh well I am weird person with very random thoughts.

Interesting tidbit, teleport and teleportation do not seem to be in Firefox’s internal dictionary as it keeps telling me the words are misspelled as other words.

Ok since Ubuntu made a change in how the touchpad scroll works in 8.10 and up, I figured I would make a new post describing how to fix the scrolling region. Well mainly its for me when I reinstall Ubuntu, well Linux Mint actually since thats my current flavor of Nix. I reinstall the OS quite often. Ok this will be quick and simple.

This is a fix for the problem where the right scroll region is too large. On my laptop, a Gateway MX6930, the right scroll region extends past the physical separator of my touchpad. It takes up about half the touch pad making it difficult to navigate the computer.

Use this post http://www.eddiemonge.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=59 to get the right scrolling region.

Type the following command into a terminal prompt (make sure you have vim installed. You do have vim installed right?)

sudo vim /etc/hal/fdi/policy/vertscroll.fdi

Once in vim you should have a blank screen with a blinking cursor. Hit ‘i’ to be able to insert text. Copy and paste the following code into the terminal. The number 5970 is for my Gateway MX6930. If you got a different value using the above linked post, then put that in instead.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
 <device>
  <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
   <merge key="input.x11_options.RightEdge" type="string">5970</merge>
  </match>
 </device>
</deviceinfo>

After you have pasted it in, press the ESC key, then type ‘:wq’ (make sure to include the colon to be able to enter commands). This will write the text to the file then exit it.

After vim closes, restart the computer. Upon restart, the right scroll region should now be fixed.

Thanks to the Ubuntu forums located at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=970277 for this invaluable help.

Ok well I came on here to post about my workout, which I may still get to, put I am getting sidetracked. I looked at my blog and thought the same thing I do everytime I look at it. It sucks. Its boring, the same as most other WordPress blogs and doesn’t really say that much about me. I want to redo it.

I figured I should start small, like everything else in my life that I am going to try to do. More on that in my workout post. I deleted a lot of the plugins that haven’t been enabled in a long time, and then took a look at the ones that are enabled.

I realize that my blog isn’t going to make money. Its my personal blog. Even if it someday becomes huge, I could always start a commercial blog to make money off of. No, I want to keep this blog personal. No ads. No advertising (unless its for one of my projects). Just simpleness about me and what I want to write about. Knowing this, I immediately disabled and deleted my Adsense plugin.

Since I don’t want to make money off my blog and I want to keep it personal, I don’t care how many people visit it or who visits it. I don’t need analytics on the site. Thats another plugin that can get removed. A bonus side-effect of removing the tracking pluging and Google Analytics code is that my site now loads slightly faster.

Trying to get the site to load faster, I have also removed Feedburner stuff since I have to do something with that account anyway. Something is loading jQuery and I have no idea what. While I use jQuery and know it, I don’t think I need it on the site right now since I don’t have anything doing anything fancy. Will have to look into that later.

My goal is to get a basic theme up by the end of the month to make this look better.

I have recently had the “pleasure” of watching Grey’s Anatomy. Living with my girlfriend sure has perks and “getting” to watch Grey’s Anatomy is one of them. Wow this show, in my opinion and apparently mine only, sucks. There are numerous reasons for this which I will briefly cover based on this week’s show (11/13/08).

Reason 1. The first reason actually doesn’t have to do with the show itself but the network it is shown on. ABC does not do online videos as well as NBC does. Sure it has added full screen HD streaming, but its ads are annoying. Well maybe not the ads themselves but the after the ads action required. After every ad, you have to click “Click to Continue” to keep the showing playing. Its obnoxious. You’re sitting there comfortably in your bed, watching a show some consider good, and then you have to get up every few minutes to click a button. Really kills the mood and enjoyability of the show. NBC doesn’t do that to you. They keep the video playing after the ads are done and if you want to interact with the ads then you can get up and do so. They know why you are there and they keep the focus on that. On the show, not on the ads.

Reason 2. Ok now on to the reasons about the show itself. The show recycles storylines from other shows. This episode has a neurotic doctor, a dead person haunting a character and some other stuff I can’t remember. The neurotic doctor is similar to when Michael J. Fox was on Scrubs (which coincidentally once made the comment about Grey’s Anatomy “it’s almost like someone was watching our lives and put it on television”. The joke was borrowed from the Simpsons but it makes it point.

The dead person haunting a character is similar to Battlestar Galactica’s Dr. Balthar’s sexy woman haunting him. He thinks she is there and can feel her. Izzy is experiencing the same thing with her dead fiancee. Original I know.

Reason 3. The storyline is just plain ridiculous when they are trying to be original. This is the main reason they steal from other shows, because they can’t write. It’s like the writers went on strike and never came back. No, actually I won’t even give them that. Its like the show never got any writers to begin with and they are just making shit up as they go. This works for some shows but for this, it doesn’t work at all.

Reason 4. It causes my girlfriend to be very angry with me. We watch the show, I make a comment and she gets very angry with me. Very angry.

Martin (dzo) has been working (tirelessly it seems) on his port of Android to the HTC Vogue (Sprint Touch, among other names), (Tmobile’s G1 is not the first phone out with Android, it’s merely the first officially endorsed by Google) and it’s coming along nicely.  Here are my thoughts so far:

(more after the break) Read the rest of this entry »

Someone once asked me why would people work on an open source project or a free project (as in they aren’t getting paid by anyone to do it). They wanted to create a community around these people but did not know them (weird idea to me, create something for someone you know nothing about). I have worked on a few of these projects and have a site going for one right now at http://www.myhtcphone.com

What’s my reasoning for doing this? For the site I am working on, a developer ported Android to my phone, HTC Vogue (Sprint Touch) and I was interested in it. I want to see what Android can do and based on early impressions, it is looking really good. Fast, responsive and seems like it could be almost infinitely expandable. That is something I am very interested in. I created the site and started making contributions to the community because I want to help further this project. I want to be able to do more on my phone and since Sprint won’t help me get there, I had to look to other fans who were taking a proactive stance. I wanted to be one of them.

Another reason I am working on this site is a monetary one. I have ads running on the site, and eventually I will put other money making systems in place to bring in some revenue. I am not looking into turning this into a cash cow though. I just want to bring in enough to cover server costs and future expansions and then, if there is anything left, give that back to the community. I want to be able to give something back to the people working on this as a thank you for their time. Maybe invest in a couple of test phones so they don’t have to use their own phones. I also want to do other things like that for this community that is working so hard on something no one else will pay them for …. yet at least.

So the reason I work on these projects is mostly to help something that is useful to me. If it isn’t available yet and I can use it/need it, then I want to help out. I want to make things that others will find useful. I want to be part of something that is greater than myself and where I feel I can actually make a contribution.

If you contribute to this type of project, what are your motivations?